Parents, you’ve got questions, we’ve got answers.

Or just as likely, we’ve got questions and you’ve got answers.

Challenge: Open Discussion

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month

0
Vote up!
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email this article

Approximately 5 children die per day in our country alone from child abuse, although from personally being a victim of both physical and verbal abuse I can tell you that technically that number is higher.

I’ve always said that although physical abuse is a terrifying thing, because you never know how badly you're going to be hurt when it happens, the emotional scars from the verbal abuse lasted far longer and caused much more and far reaching damage, such as the kind of student I was, how I acted in relationships and being suicidal. If you add the number of suicides that happened as a result of the hopelessness caused by verbal abuse to the number of victims who die at the hands of their parents from physical abuse, the number would be much higher. And if a child never gets help, the damage from verbal abuse can have a lasting effect on a person’s life basically killing their quality of life.

How does child abuse tie in to bullying? Well you might guess that some children bully other children because they are bullied and abused at home by their “domestic bully.” But many young people become targets of bullying because they’ve played the role of the child/person being abused because they are bullied and abused at home, somewhat on the lines of a co-dependent. And yes the pink elephant is that most child abuse is the result of an alcoholic or drug addicted parent.

One of the biggest problem is most abuse victims will never report their abuse, I was one of them which is why I wrote The Teenage and Young Adult Survival Handbook which deals with not only child abuse but all the issues that surround it such as being a child of an alcoholic, suicide, bullying, living in dysfunctional and abusive homes, how to survive and the where to get help. I share from personal experiences so it’s relatable and one of the biggest goals is to let teenagers and young adults know they are not by any means alone and to give them hope.

Of course sometimes getting that information to a young person is hard and even confrontational. I have included The Teenage and Young Adult Survival Handbook in all four of my young adult fiction novels, Runaway, The World is Wrong, Child’s Island and Who Am I?

All four books are action packed and read like an exciting movie that a young person would want to see. The characters are extremely relatable to their readers. No matter what walk of life they come from teenagers and young adults (and even adults) tend to love the story, which solves another problem of there not being enough young adult books out there that young people really want to read. The fact that The Teenage and Young Adult Survival Handbook is an insert in the novels camouflages the young person from being embarrassed from asking for it or can prevent a conflict if you were trying to get the lifesaving information to a young person in need.

To learn more please visit www.PowerPublishingCorp.com

This post comes from the TODAY Parenting Team community, where all members are welcome to post and discuss parenting solutions. Learn more and join us! Because we're all in this together.